Category: VW

Went to the Omaha Summer Arts Festival today – bought some sweet VW art!

The event had tons of booths with different artists and food stalls from all over – and a random Dish network booth whose sales person sauntered over and asked Noelle “Who’s your cable provider Ma’am” to which my awesome snarky wife replied with a smirk on her face “…None of them”

One of the booths housed Michael and Mary Ann, a couple of VW enthusiasts with a passion for their Karmann Ghia. They had a bunch of really cool pieces, and we couldn’t resist the blue and white splitty!  Check out their work at www.michaelholmesart.com!

I’ve always wanted to see what lies beneath the green paint on this bus. Today, we started stripping down the back hatch – the goal is to see if we can get it back to original paint.

The top layer of green falls right off with a little scrapping from a razor blade.

The underlying primer is much more difficult – we tried a bunch of different combinations of scrapping, scrubbing with acetone and paint remover, and a little elbow grease.  Turns out what worked best for us is a healthy paper towel rubbing of Motsenbocker’s Graffiti Remover on the primer, then another healthy rubbing on the dark brown respray paint with no-scratch dobie pads.  After lots and lots of scrubbing, the original paint starts to shine through.  Yay!

Unfortunately, it takes hours to get even a small spot visible – and, as we uncovered more of the back hatch, it became clear that the original paint had been heavily sanded when the bus was repainted that hideous dark brown at some point in its history.  This means we won’t be able to just strip the bus down to OG paint – oh well, we will re-paint it back to that color anyways.

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks.  The high-level story is that I’m in the process of quitting my very stable and safe corporate job to fix up the bus and drive it around the country!  Noelle has been building up a graphic design business, and we’re planning on taking a year or so to work remotely while we travel around the US (and maybe beyond!)

For the time being we’ve moved to the sunny hills of western Iowa, and into my parents’ basement (classic millennials). The bus is all set up in their nice detached garage, and I’m really looking forward to tearing it all apart.  The plan is to get going in earnest on restoring and turning this thing into a camper – I’ve also started a build thread on thesamba.com to glean as much info as I can from that amazing resource.

We’re going to get started taking this thing apart so we can really see what we are working with!

Thankfully, this isn’t a picture of hail damage on the bus. It is a picture of hail damage on my real car… but at least that has comprehensive insurance!

Crazy storm rolled through on Tuesday night – of course I had driven the bus to a friend’s place for a friendly game of poker…  It started with a few rain drops while I was slowly but surely giving away all my precious poker chips.  I thought to myself “hmm might be driving home in the rain.. won’t be the first time”  Then all hell broke loose – huge chunks of ice start raining down – biggest hail I’ve ever seen.  I’m freaking out, Noelle is calling me… she’s freaking out.  The poor bus is sitting entirely exposed in the parking lot!!  I run out into the storm, hail smashing down around me, fling the cargo doors open, the sound inside the bus reverberating off the sheet metal was deafening – I grabbed the blanket that covers the rear seat, flung that up on the roof – grabbed the thick rubber floor mat, hefted that up on the roof.  I got most of the roof covered and ran back inside completely soaked!

Fast forward 10 minutes, I dominated the newly restarted poker game, and decided I better get that bus back home and safe in the garage.  The bus definitely took care of me on the way back – pouring down rain, massive wind, flooded out roads, and hail, more hail – we drove through it all; the roads were basically empty, and I roared that thing all the way home.  The engine was strong, the bus felt solid, I pushed it hard. Finally pulled into the garage – safe!  I did a cursory check of the roof – definitely some paint chipped off, but it doesn’t look like there’s any real damage – whew!  My real car wasn’t so lucky…

I spent some time Wednesday airing out the bus and garage – glad we survived the storm!

This bus definitely has gremlins. “Gremlins… You got-you gotta watch out for them forgeiners cuz they plant gremlins in their machinery.” Gremlins, 1984

Haha, that movie is seriously terrifying… Went to start the bus this week, chug chug chug – it wouldn’t start! I think maybe it was flooded so I grab the carb cleaner, spray a good amount into the carb and try to start the engine again – it starts, but it wasn’t happy.  I do a test drive around the parking lot, everything seems ok – park the bus, attempt to start it again to test it – this time – nothing!

Ok fast forward a couple days – try the bus again, it doesn’t start, doesn’t even turn over.  I start in on the Muir checklist of what to do when the engine doesn’t start – I checked the coil – it sparked so thats good, I adjusted the auto-choke – it needed reset after John and I messed with everything last week.  I tried rolling the bus backwards in 3rd gear (this has never worked for me, but yet I still try it optimistically every time!)  Finally I decided it’s either the ignition switch or the starter. Its easier to check the starter, and sure enough, I climb under the bus and immediately notice a loose wire hanging down  “there’s your problem right thar!”  Looks like the wire that comes from the ignition switch worked its way loose – a gremlin. Reconnect it, bus fires right up – I mess with the choke a little, drive around the neighborhood, and call it a day.

It makes me nervous because even though this was an easy fix, I have this sense of foreboding every time I drive it that them gremlins are just waiting to get me.  I’m thinking that I won’t be fully confident in this bus until I’ve checked or replaced just about everything on it – sounds like fun!